A pregnant 19-year-old has been charged with raping a 14-year-old boy after she signed up for Medicaid and listed him as the child’s father.

Mekenzie Leigh Guffey allegedly told police that she had sex with the boy multiple times in her car when she was arrested on Friday in Hollywood, Alabama.

Police said her relationship with the boy started in December when they were introduced via a mutual friend at a McDonald’s restaurant.

Authorities began investigating Guffey when she applied for Medicaid this month and identified the 14-year-old as the baby’s father.

‘She was proud of him being the father until she found out we were going to become involved,’ police chief Jason Hepler told AL.com.

‘She told us she didn’t count but it was more than a few times that they were together.’

The teenager posted news of her pregnancy on Facebook on March 2.

‘I found it a lot easier to announce it on here than texting all my family & friends individually, but welcoming my sweet little baby October 17th!!’ Guffey wrote alongside a photo of a pregnancy test.

Guffey was charged with second-degree rape, second-degree sex abuse, enticing a child for immoral purposes and traveling to meet a child for an unlawful sex act.

She was also charged with possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography after police allegedly found naked photos on her phone that she and the boy had been sending each other.

Guffey was released from the Jackson County Jail on Tuesday on $25,300 bail, according to jail records.

But the arrest devastated Peggy Thompson, the maternal grandmother who raised Guffey from age 11. Sobbing throughout an interview at her home in Scottsboro, Thompson was so choked up she could barely speak about her granddaughter.

Thompson said the young woman spent her early childhood moving between flea-bag motels, short-term apartments and at least one mobile home with parents who abused drugs and left her to raise her younger brother before splitting. The children often went hungry and dirty despite Mekenzie’s best efforts, she said, and the girl was covered with lice and bug bites when the kids went to live with their grandparents for good.

Things were looking up for the teen last year after she graduated from high school and got a job in a rug plant, Thompson said, but Mekenzie seemed to fall apart after her beloved grandfather, Gilbert Thompson, died Aug. 25. Hurt on the job and unable to work, Mekenzie was eager for companionship and may have fallen for a boy who looked a lot older than 14, Thompson said.

“She was just looking for someone to hold on to,” Thompson said. Thompson said she recently met the boy, and the “huge” teenager appeared to be just another of Mekenzie’s friends since they weren’t “touchy-feely or anything.”

Well, what do you think about the sordid situation? What’s the right punishment, if any, for Mekenzie?

A savvy Daily Mail commenter came up with the relevant laws:

It’s called statutory rape. If she had been 14 and he was 19 he would have been charged. A 19 year old is legally an adult and 14 is a minor. Minors cannot legally give consent to sex. Equality demands that individuals are treated the same, regardless of their gender. Here are the Alabama Statutes 13A-6-67 : (a) A person commits the crime of sexual abuse in the second degree if: … (2) He, being 19 years old or older, subjects another person to sexual contact who is less than 16 years old, but more than 12 years old. 13A-6-62 (a) A person commits the crime of rape in the second degree if: … (1) Being 16 years old or older, he or she engages in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex less than 16 and more than 12 years old; provided, however, the actor is at least two years older than the member of the opposite sex. In some cases the charge could be dropped through marriage, but in Alabama, a minor has to be at least 16 to marry with parental consent.

Slightly off topic is this short excerpt from the 1957 Hollywood film Poor White Trash. Like I said, Hollywood has been insulting whites for decades. This seems like an opportune time to remind everyone of that.